In this photo, provided by climber Azim Afif, people approach the scene after an avalanche triggered by a massive earthquake swept across Everest Base Camp, Nepal on Saturday. Afif and his team of four others from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia all survived the avalanche.
Photograph: Azim Afif/AP

Mountain rescue helicopters braved poor weather to reach Everest base camp on Sunday morning to ferry out badly injured survivors from the avalanche that killed at least 17 at the encampment on Saturday.

The avalanche was triggered by Saturday’s huge earthquake that devastated Nepal, and sent blocks of rock and ice ploughing through the camp where expeditioners assemble to begin their assault on the world’s highest mountain.

The Nepal Mountaineering Association said on Sunday morning that about 100 climbers were stuck in camps one and two above the icefall and although they were safe and well, it would be difficult to evacuate them from the mountain because of the damage to the route.

The 22 survivors initially evacuated – among more than 60 who were injured – were flown to Pheriche, the nearest village with a clinic, after being treated at the base camp medical tent.

Details of the continuing rescue efforts around Everest base camp were reported by Ang Tsering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

The rescue got under way as new details began to emerge of the disaster at Everest base camp – the second serious incident to strike the mountain in two years after 16 sherpas were killed in an avalanche during last year’s climbing season.

It appeared the avalanche of rocks and ice destroyed at least 30 tents as well as parts of the equipped route through the ice fall leading to the higher camps when it swept through the centre of the sprawling base encampment, which appears annually on a shoulder of rocky glacial moraine below the Khumbu Icefall.

As of Sunday morning an unknown number of climbing teams remained stuck at higher camps unable to descend the icefall – a complex and dangerous jumble of crevasses and unstable ice cliffs. All of the dead and injured appeared to have been in base camp itself.

According to reports from survivors the avalanche was triggered by a slide on neighbouring Pumori, a 7,000-metre peak.

A cloud of snow and debris triggered by an earthquake flies towards Everest Base Camp, moments before flattening part of the camp in the Himalayas. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

Despite reports of climbers on nearby Makalu also being affected, British guide Victor Saunders messaged saying that all parties on his side of the mountain were safe.

Details of the situation on Everest remained patchy, with communications disrupted by the scale of the earthquake centred in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal.

At Everest base camp survivors used internet messaging services to describe a scene of terror as the snow and ice roared through the Khumbu Icefall and into the camp.

As the first details of those who died on Everest began to emerge, Google reported that Dan Fredinburg, an executive at the company, was among them, having succumbed to a head injury.

“Sadly we lost one of our own in this tragedy. Dan Fredinburg, a long-time member of the privacy organisation … was in Nepal with three other Googlers hiking Mount Everest. He has passed away,” said Lawrence You, the company’s director of privacy.

According to a report posted on the British Mountaineering Council’s website, climbers trapped at camp one, above base camp, were due to hold a meeting on Sunday morning to review how they could descend safely.

The website quoted climber Rolfe Oostra who was at camp one when the avalanche struck.

“As Jo and I arrived into C1 in low vis we heard a tremendous noise – it was all around us – presuming an avalanche – which was a nightmare to pin the direction on. The noise and movement was enough to trip us off our feet.

“Later there was the loudest noise I have ever heard coming from below which produced an enormous backdraft. It was not easy to work out what was going on but we were naturally now pretty wired trying to predict avalanches as well as make out what was happening.

“After frantic coms to BC [base camp] it was related to us that there had been huge avalanches and landslides on a devastation scale into BC triggered by the earthquake. We are in radio coms with BC and sat phone coms back home. We are all OK but devastated for our friends and colleagues.”

Azim Afif, the 27-year-old leader of a climbing team from University of Technology Malaysia, said in an interview on the service WhatsApp that his group was in a meal tent waiting for lunch when suddenly the table and everything around them began shaking.

This photo provided by Azim Afif shows the scene after the avalanche. Photograph: Azim Afif/AP

They ran outside to see “a wall of ice coming towards us” and heard Sherpa guides shouting for people to run for their lives, he wrote.

“We just think to find a place to hide and save our life.”

The small team planned to sleep together on Saturday night in one large tent “to make sure if anything happen, we are together”, Afif said.

Immediately after the avalanche climbing teams scattered across the camp and began to work together to search for survivors.

Gordon Janow, the director of programs for the Washington-based guiding outfit Alpine Ascents International, said from Seattle that his team had come through the avalanche unscathed.

Their first goal was to deal with the devastation at base camp, he said, and they would then try to create new routes to help climbers stuck above the treacherous Khumbu Icefall, just above base camp and a key route up the lower part of Everest.

“Everybody’s pretty much in rescue mode, but this is different from some independent climbing accident where people can be rescued and taken somewhere else,” Janow said. “I don’t know where somewhere else is.”